During a checkpoint carried out near Civitella in Val di Chianathe Financiers of the Provincial Command of the Guardia di Finanza of Arezzo they stopped a articulated lorrywith plate foreign and conducted by driver Slovenianwhich resulted transport as many as 10 tons of tobacco.
The operation
The Fiamme Gialle verified the load transported, consisting of 100 boxes containing tobaccoformally qualified as “raw tobacco waste“. The product turned out to be sold by a Croatian company and destined for a company with registered office in the Province of Arezzo. The military examined the accompanying international documents in detail, comparing them with a careful visual examination of the type of tobacco actually transported.
The financiers thus noticed a substantial discrepancy between the declared product description and the type of tobacco actually on board the articulated lorry. The latter could not in fact be classified as “raw tobacco waste” but was instead evidently “processed tobacco waste”, to the point of having to be qualified as product “smokable” and, therefore, subject to consumption tax (excise duty), for an amount of approximately 1.5 million euros.
Tobacco seized
The different product cataloging reported on the documents compared to the real situation, evidently aimed at avoiding the payment of the taxes in question, integrated the crimes referred to in articles 291bis (“smuggling of foreign manufactured tobaccos”) and 291ter (“aggravating circumstances of the crime of smuggling of foreign manufactured tobaccos”) of the Consolidated Law on customs legislation, for which they came reported to the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Arezzo the legal representatives of the supplying and purchasing companies.
The cargo was then seizedawaiting definitive specialist product tests by the “smoke laboratory” of the Customs and Monopolies Agency of Rome, specialized in the subject, the outcome of which, after a few days, confirmed the product qualification initially identified by the financiers (processed tobacco waste) and the taxation of the seized product.
